Seminar introduces western Mainers to Buddhism

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FARMINGTON, Maine (USA) -- In an effort to leave stress behind and seek introspection, a group of western Mainers unfurled meditation mats and blankets, laid down on the floor with their arms at their sides and their eyes closed to participate in guided mediation.

<< Joe Rankin, right, and Tim Davis spoke to participants during the Western Maine Buddhism seminar at the University of Maine in Farmington on Sunday. Rankin is a former Morning Sentinel reporter and Kennebec Journal editor. Staff photo by David Leaming

The 30 people in attendance were gathering for the Western Maine Buddhism seminar, which met Sunday afternoon at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Co-organizer Jeb Enoch, who said he has been practicing for 18 years, said while many of those in attendance have been practicing for years, most have begun only recently to meet as a group.

"We're just really starting to build the community," he said.

The organizers decided to host the event as a way of gathering people interested in Buddhism along with members of three local Buddhism groups, or "sanghas."

Buddhism, considered one of the major world religions, was founded in India around 500 B.C. Most followers are found in Asian countries such as India, China and Japan.

Buddhists generally believe that correct thinking and self-denial will enable the soul to reach nirvana, a state of release into ultimate enlightenment and peace. Specific philosophies, however, vary by sect.

A co-organizer from each of the three groups spoke to the crowd about their respective Buddhist traditions and their personal experience practicing.

Tim Davis, of the Theravada tradition, spoke about mindfulness-based stress reduction courses he co-leads at the Franklin County Health Network; Joe Rankin, of the Full Moon Sangha, spoke about the Zen tradition; and Jeb Enoch, of the Tibetan tradition, spoke about his group, Rime Sangha, and his philosophy.

Along with the mini-seminar about the different traditions, the group participated in a question-and-answer session, along with meditation and yoga exercises.

Those in attendance also brought food donations for Care & Share Food Closet. The invitation for the gathering stated that in Buddhist circles, giving, or "dana," is an important part of the tradition and asked those planning to attend to donate if they were able to do so.

Chesterville resident Marjorie Cormier said she thought the event was informative. She said she has practiced Buddhism on and off and enjoyed the seminar as a way to help renew her practicing.

"It was a very nonthreatening way to learn," she said.

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Nagarjuna and Quantum physics: Eastern and Western Modes of Thought

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Christian Thomas Kohl dissects key terms in the teachings of Nagarjuna and transposes these ideas with Quantum Physics. The following is a summary of his thesis on the subject.

1. Key term: ‘Emptiness’. The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna ( 2nd century BC ) is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations  create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence  of things that somehow arise?  My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation.

2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. Reality is without foundation. Or: Reality has the wide open space as foundation.

3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realised that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space.

4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalisation. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalisation might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 BC) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy.

5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two things. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles.

Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384  - 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose:

“Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose,  The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalisation in a  Whiteheadian sense.

6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined  particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ I do not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences.

7. Key terms : ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’.  Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm.

For details, please visit: http://goo.gl/R41U4

Chapter 12: Suffering and the causes of suffering. Commentary: Suffering is not independent from a cause of suffering and not identical with its cause. There can be no cause without an effect, or an effect without a cause. The notion ‘cause’ has no meaning without the notion ‘effect’. Cause and effect are not one, but they cannot be separated into two independent notions either. Like suffering reality does not consist of single, isolated material or immaterial components; suffering arises only by dependence on other causes. Like everything in this world suffering and its (here at this picture invisible) cause are not one and they are not two different objects. [page 20. Christian Thomas Kohl. Nagarjuna and Quantum Physics]

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Christian Thomas Kohl has studied Political Science and the Philosophy of Science at the University of Berlin. He has studied Indonesian and Indian music and has promoted music from India, Pakistan, and Tibet. Most of his time over the past three decades, he has spent reconciling the fundamental concepts and principles of quantum physics and Buddhist philosophy. He belongs to the Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. http://ctkohl.googlepages.com

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Buddhists seek voice in strife-hit western Myanmar

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SITTWE, Myanmar -- Disgruntled by international support for Muslim Rohingya in unrest-hit western Myanmar, ethnic Rakhine Buddhists are demanding recognition of their own plight and venting a rage that veers into racism.

<< Myanmar Buddhist monks rally on the streets of Mandalay (AFP, File Pic)

More than 150 people have died in communal clashes in western Rakhine State since June and thousands of homes have been torched, leaving some 75,000 people displaced, in a convulsion of violence that has torn apart neighbourhoods.

Losses have been incurred on both sides, but the international community has mostly focused on the fate of the area's Muslim Rohingya, long considered by the United Nations to be among the most persecuted minorities in the world.

But many Rakhine, whose state is one of Myanmar's poorest, are adamant it is in fact they who have been wronged, first by grinding years under the iron-fisted junta rule and more recently by rising numbers of Rohingya on their land.

"We have no right to speak, we are marginalised in the international arena," said Oo Hla Saw, general secretary of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party.

In an attempt to push their point, hundreds have taken to the streets in recent weeks. Led by robed Buddhist monks, the demonstrators openly spoke of their desire to drive out the Muslim minority.

They also protested against plans by the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to open an office in the country.

"We can live with many kinds of people, but not with the Muslims from here," said U Ohattama, a senior monk at Klak Kha Mout monastery. "The Muslims from here are like animals."

Many in Myanmar rail against the presence of around 800,000 Rohingya in their country, viewing them as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

Myanmar authorities have for decades refused to provide the minority group with papers, rendering them stateless.

But despite their difficulties, ethnic Rakhine are quick to heap scorn on the assistance provided to the Rohingya by the United Nations and foreign charities.

"Rakhine society always relies on itself. Muslim people are always eager to rely on international aid when they have problems," said U Nya Na, leader of a monk association in Sittwe. "Rohingya are like beggars in a market."

The international community helps only the "kalar", agreed Myar San, a 28-year-old internally displaced Rakhine resident, using a derogatory term for Muslims.

She is one of several thousand ethnic Buddhists in the state who have been forced to take shelter in monasteries and camps since the recent communal violence made her homeless.

But whereas the Buddhists displaced have freedom of movement and can get to work, tens of thousands of Rohingya are trapped in squalid camps on the outskirts of the state capital Sittwe, relying on humanitarian aid.

Aid agencies refute accusations that their help is partial.

"We are there to help the people who are in need and our assistance is based on that criteria only, it is not based on any other criteria of race, ethnicity, religion," said the UN chief in Yangon, Ashok Nigam.

Mostly clustered in the north of Rakhine state, the Rohingya have for decades been subjected to movement restrictions, forced labour and land grabs, while access to education and health services has been limited.

But the ethnic Rakhine community would like the world to pay more attention to its plight.

With 44 percent of its population living under the poverty line Rakhine is the second-poorest state in one of the world's most impoverished nations, according to a UNDP report last year.

While the state is rich in natural resources, notably oil and gas, locals have benefited little and "this area became very poor because of the military dictatorship", according to Oo Hla Saw.

Like other "official" minorities in the ethnically diverse country the Rakhines suffered under the yoke of the junta for nearly half a century until it was replaced by a nominally civilian, reformist government in March 2011.

"This is a population that has faced terrible abuses... everything from forced labour to land confiscation, to other violence and abuses by the Burmese military," said Matthew Smith from Human Rights Watch, using Myanmar's former name.

But today, many ethnic Rakhine appear to have found an ideal scapegoat for their hardships in the Rohingya community, which they see as threat to the survival of their "race".

"Rakhine people are nearly a minority here," said businessman Ba Aung, 57, vowing not to rehire the three Muslims who worked for him prior to the outbreak of violence.

The current situation might have been even worse if hundreds of thousands of Rohingya had not sought exile in Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh or Malaysia over previous decades, observers say.

This fear of the Rakhines being "submerged" is quite real and explains their "radical" attitude, according to Jacques Leider, a Thailand-based scholar at the French School of the Far East.

"Some (Rakhines) recognise they grew up with an anti-Muslim, racist reflex that is difficult for them to undo today."

And if this reflex is likely to alienate the international community, Rakhines hope they can at least count on the new, more democratic administration in Naypyidaw to side with them on nationalist issues.

"The democratic government will follow the wishes of the ethnic Rakhine," Nya Na said with conviction.

The monk has at least one reason to be optimistic. In the wake of this month's protests, the government blocked the OIC from opening a branch in Myanmar.

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